Artificial Christmas trees aren’t for everyone. If they are your cup of tea, though, it makes sense to invest in one that’s attractive, functional and good quality for the price. We recommend the Best Choice Products – Premium Spruce to satisfy that trifecta. It looks full and festive, and comes together quickly with under an hour of setup. At less than $100, it’s also great quality for a low price. The National Tree Company – North Valley Spruce is another excellent choice. It’s the easiest and most convenient tree to set up in under an hour and its varied-length branch tips make it look more realistic. If you need a small tree, the Home Accents Holiday – 3 Foot Unlit Tacoma Pine is a quality investment with its soft branch tips and below $20 price point.
Whether you pick a blue spruce or a balsam fir, you put all that effort into finding and cutting down the perfect Christmas tree—don't let it go to waste. The right Christmas tree stand can help keep your tree stable, hydrated, and alive longer (not to mention, help you show off your tree's best side), so they're worth the investment—unless you plan to go the artificial tree route.
That being said, this NTC tree was even easier to set up than the Best Choice Products tree. It was so easy, in fact, that two people could set it up in under 45 minutes. The hinged branches literally fell into place as soon as we snapped the the three sections of the tree together. Then we did some fluffing and it was ready to go! As mentioned, this tree also left our arms a little bit scratched up after the fluffing process.

Number of branch tips and shedding: If you’ve already started perusing through faux trees online, you’ve noticed that many companies specify the number of branch tips on their trees. This is because there’s a direct connection between number of tips and realism. More tips yield a more realistic tree. And just like real Christmas trees, these branch tips are also bound to shed some needles. This is especially true the first time you take the tree out of the box and set it up. The best fake Christmas trees will shed less with each year of use.

With 1,867 lifelike polyethylene branch tips, this Downswept Douglas Fir model is thickly covered and shows no gaps. And at 37 percent polyethylene, it has a higher proportion of realistic foliage—and lower proportion of fakey PVC “pine needles”—than our GE and Home Accent Holiday picks. It’s also priced competitively with models offering similar quality and similar height, girth, and tip-count specs. Note, however, that the price of the Downswept Douglas Fir varies considerably between retailers; we’ve seen it listed for as low as $400 and as high as $800. It may ease the sting to remember that you’re making at least a 10-year investment.
The Jack-Post 519-ST Oasis Tree Stand falls behind the competition because of how difficult it is to use. First, five bolts need to be screwed in and secured. We understand the more angles that you come in from the more likely the tree will become straight, but if you're going to use five bolts give them larger handles to prevent fatigue. However, we have to give the Jack-Post props for being stable. Its vague star shape dispersed most of the force when we struck it with our testing weight. It barely moved an inch.
A super-fun way to mix things up this year is with colored Christmas trees. Use one as your main tree or start a monotone holiday theme room. We’ve got a rainbow of colors to pick from: a black Christmas tree, white Christmas tree, pink Christmas tree, red Christmas tree, blue Christmas tree or purple Christmas tree. Or go metallic with a silver Christmas tree, aluminum Christmas tree or gold Christmas tree.
Balsam Hill's designers carefully craft our trees to mimic nature using site visits and cutting from live trees to guide them. We offer three types of foliage options that are made from either PE or PVC material. While some trees use one type of foliage exclusively, others may use mix of foliage types to achieve a particular look. The specific mix is specified on each product detail page in the section that describes the tree's foliage.
^ The Christmas Tree: published by Darton and Clark, London. "The ceremony of the Christmas tree, so well known throughout Germany, bids fair to be welcomed among us, with the other festivities of the season, especially now the Queen, within her own little circle, has set the fashion, by introducing it on the Christmas Eve in her own regal palace." Book review of The Christmas Tree from the Weekly Chronicle, 14 December 1844, quoted in an advert headlined "A new pleasure for Christmas" in The Times, 23 December 1844, p. 8.
Debi liked that the Krinner was “very solid” but said that the 18-pound weight made it, “a bit cumbersome” moving it up and down the stairs when taking it out and putting it away for the season. She also noted that filling the Krinner with water “was easier than previous stands we have owned, but not necessarily easy, since you have to practically lay on the floor to find the fill zone. But definitely not difficult, and it held a lot more water [than other stands], as I remember, which is nice.” Erica tested the similar Krinner Tree Genie XXL Deluxe (which has the same water reservoir) and said that, “the well is so huge that you just don’t have to water as much in general as you would with most tree stands.”

Much of the background cast came from Mendelson's home neighborhood in northern California.[18] According to Robbins, the children viewed the script's sophisticated dialogue as "edgy," finding several words and phrases, among them "eastern syndicate", difficult to pronounce.[15] He recalled the recording sessions as chaotic, with excited children running rampant. Nevertheless, the recording of A Charlie Brown Christmas was completed in one day.[15] Jefferson Airplane was recording next door and came over to get the children's autographs.[2] Following the special's broadcast, the children became wildly popular in their respective elementary schools; Robbins recalled groups approaching him asking him to recite lines of dialogue.[18]

Tinsel and several types of garland or ribbon are commonly used to decorate a Christmas tree. Silvered saran-based tinsel was introduced later. Delicate mold-blown and painted colored glass Christmas ornaments were a specialty of the glass factories in the Thuringian Forest, especially in Lauscha in the late 19th century, and have since become a large industry, complete with famous-name designers. Baubles are another common decoration, consisting of small hollow glass or plastic spheres coated with a thin metallic layer to make them reflective, with a further coating of a thin pigmented polymer in order to provide coloration. Lighting with electric lights (Christmas lights or, in the United Kingdom, fairy lights) is commonly done. A tree-topper, sometimes an angel but more frequently a star, completes the decoration.
^ "1 мая собираются праздновать 59% россиян" [May 1 going to celebrate 59% of Russians] (in Russian). April 27, 2012. Archived from the original on 2012-11-01. Retrieved December 2, 2012. New Year is among the most important holidays for 81% of Russians, while Christmas is such only for 19%, ranking after Victory Day, Easter, International Women's Day.
Potential customers who have never actually seen one of our fresh holiday wreaths might find it helpful to know that the entire process of creating, decorating and shipping each fresh Christmas wreath is performed on our farm, thus enabling us to perform quality inspections from start to finish. We also handcraft cedar garland, holiday centerpieces, Christmas door swags and other decorative fresh evergreens. We do our best to take product pictures that help exemplify the quality of our beautiful live Christmas wreaths, but when it comes down to it you're going to have to buy one of our live wreaths to get a full understanding of how impressive our live Christmas wreaths really are!
In Russia, the Christmas tree was banned after the October Revolution[64] but then reinstated as a New-year spruce (Новогодняя ёлка, Novogodnyaya yolka) in 1935. It became a fully secular icon of the New Year holiday, for example, the crowning star was regarded not as a symbol of Bethlehem Star, but as the Red star. Decorations, such as figurines of airplanes, bicycles, space rockets, cosmonauts, and characters of Russian fairy tales, were produced. This tradition persists after the fall of the USSR, with the New Year holiday outweighing the Christmas (7 January) for a wide majority of Russian people.[65]
There was an old pagan custom, associated with Koliada, of suspending a branch of fir, spruce or pine called Podłaźniczka from the ceiling. The branches were decorated with apples, nuts, cookies, colored paper, stars made of straw, ribbons and colored wafers. Some people believed that the tree had magical powers that were linked with harvesting and success in the next year.

Maybe you prefer the traditional bolted stand, or maybe you're in the market for a stand that's designed to make set-up a total breeze. Or, maybe you just want one that's secure enough to hold the biggest tree you can fit inside your house. In any case, these are the best Christmas tree stands you can buy this holiday season, and why they're worth the purchase. Add your favorite ornaments, and you're good to go.

Of the comments provided, most of them were from repeat buyers — which is always a great sign. They note how easy the stand makes it to decorate the tree, with no squeezing between the walls required to place ornaments on various branches. Their one callout is to ensure the stand is correctly-sized to fit your tree, which can often be confusing for faux buys. All around, most individuals were happy with their new holiday purchase.
Both setting up and taking down a Christmas tree are associated with specific dates. Traditionally, Christmas trees were not brought in and decorated until Christmas Eve (24 December)[citation needed] or, in the traditions celebrating Christmas Eve rather than the first day of Christmas, 23 December, and then removed the day after Twelfth Night (5 January); to have a tree up before or after these dates was even considered bad luck,[citation needed] and that to avoid bad luck from affecting the house's residents, the tree must be left up until after the following Twelfth Night passes.
A wreath on the front door is a welcome sign to visitors and a traditional way to decorate outdoors for the holiday. An average front door measures 36 inches across, so a 28-inch wreath could hang nicely centered on the door about a foot below the top with space on either side. To accent with an oversized look, hang a 36-inch wreath to adorn the full width of the door. If your front door is larger, you can go for a larger wreath or if you have double front doors place a matching wreath on each door for a truly festive feel.
Nicole is a Senior Content Specialist whose writing passion ranges from national recycling initiatives to how to find the perfect Christmas tree. She loves her dog more than most people, and she subsists almost entirely on iced coffee. When she’s not copy editing and researching for Your Best Digs, she’s usually curled up in bed with a good book or outside exploring nature.
Perhaps a good “starter tree” for a young family, it has all of the basic functionalities like quick-set technology and an included stand, lights and fuses. However, this tree’s comparatively low price point shows through in its branch tip count (just 1000 tips) and only 500 lights. Even less reassuringly, the lights are incandescent, which means you risk burnout before you’ve gotten the most out of your tree.
If you're looking for an American-made Christmas tree stand that just gets the job done, then you should check out the Cinco Express C-152E. We liked the fact the bolts had handles that saved our fingers from endless twisting. After setting up the tree, our testing showed that this stand excels at stability. When it struck, it barely moved an inch. The bottom has a lattice texture to help the stand grip the floor.

In anticipation of Christmas, I ordered, received and used Charlie Brown's Christmas Tree 2 weeks before the 25th. I use it Every time I have come home by triggering the music button. While the tune is redundant, it has a happy pleasant rhythm to it and keeps me in that great pre-Xmas spirit. In fact, on Christmas day my son-in-law immediately recognized Charlie Brown's Christmas song and pined for such a gift next year. I intend to order this wonderful symbolic leaning tree with lonely ornament in 2012 to add to his annual pleasure.

Georgians have their own traditional Christmas tree called Chichilaki, made from dried up hazelnut or walnut branches that are shaped to form a small coniferous tree. These pale-colored ornaments differ in height from 20 cm (7.9 in) to 3 meters (9.8 feet). Chichilakis are most common in the Guria and Samegrelo regions of Georgia near the Black Sea, but they can also be found in some stores around the capital of Tbilisi.[citation needed] Georgians believe that Chichilaki resembles the famous beard of St. Basil the Great, because Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates St. Basil on January 1.